Back to school!

Summer has zoomed by and the yellow school buses are starting to make the rounds in our neighborhood.

Last week was the first week of school for Karina and Gabriel, who are attending the co-op preschool that Eliana attended, and that Karina attended last year.  Karina loves school and was very excited.  You can see in the picture below that during breakfast, she was wearing her backpack while sitting on the chair.  Gabriel also said that he wanted to go to pre-school, but we weren't 100% sure how he would do.  He had it in his head that he would be in the same classroom with Karina and we kept explaining to him that he'd be in the classroom next door.

Xiao Yu unfortunately was NOT going to attend pre-school but as with everything that the other kids are doing, he wanted to be part of the action.  

We arrived at the pre-school.  Elvin came along to drop Gabriel off.  Even though he is our third child, it still seemed like a big milestone since he was the baby of the family (up until recently.)

Walking into the school, which rents out space from a church.

The obligatory picture in front of the pre-school's sign.  As one could have easily predicted, Karina cooperates with the picture taking by flashing a nice smile while Gabriel does his usual averting his eyes thing.

The kids have to hang their backpacks on coat hooks and each kid has a specific number.  Being a Yuen, Gabriel is of course at the end of the alphabet and the last hook.  He was a little disappointed because he wanted to be number 3, not number twelve.  Karina, ever the logical and helpful one, pointed out to Gabriel that 1 plus 2 equals 3!  It was kid logic, but it seemed to have made sense to Gabey and he was happy again.

Then we drop off Karina in her class.  She has Mrs. Walker again, who is a great teacher.  Karina has pre-school three days a week this year, while Gabriel's is two days a week.

Xiao Yu found Pixie the guinea pig.  He has no fear and lets his finger be licked by the guinea pig.

Then it was Gabriel's turn to check in.  He turned in his folder and got a sticker.

We (especially Elvin) were wondering if he was going to be apprehensive or not.  Our fears were unfounded as Gabriel found the play-doh that was out and sat down to play.  He did great!

The following Friday, Elvin was a "helping parent," which means that he gets to help out with tasks in the classroom and also gets to play with the kids some.  Here is Gabriel listening to Mrs. Nuce read a book.  She is a very gentle soul and so nice with the kids.  Karina also had her as a teacher.

Gabriel also got to play with the trains.

When your parent is a "helping parent", you get to turn the lights off, then back on to signal that it's time to clean up.  All the kids think this is pretty great.

After cleaning up, it was story time.

And then, as the "special kid" again, another perk is that you get to bring a toy to do show-and-tell.  Gabey brought a toy laptop computer, which he thinks is his (even though it was a gift to Eliana when she was little.)  However, Gabey doesn't feel 100% comfortable in class yet, so when Mrs. Nuce asked him what he brought, and what it does, he wouldn't talk.  He just nodded "yes" and shook his head "no".  We think that in a few weeks, as he gets more used to school, he will start talking freely.

Gabey does love recess time thought, especially with all the shovels and buckets they have.

And here is Gabriel's first artwork from school.  With his two favorite colors--green and orange.

And, Eliana also started her school as well.  In addition to her home school, she attends Flex Academy one day per week.  It's a program through the local school district specifically for home schooled kids.  They get to do art projects, write poetry, and other fun things such as raise pet snails (no kidding!)  She attended last year as well and she absolutely loves it.  It is an all-day class so here she is packing her lunch.

And she also had to pack her pencil box.

And so here she is...off to school again!